Please post which antenna you bought and your results with it, when available. TIA.

Will do. I should be getting it today so I'll do some testing and will post my results on Monday.

Last night the pixelation mysteriously stopped so I'm guessing Charter must have sent someone to the area. I didn't see any temporary cable runs on my street though, so maybe the problem was further up or it was a simpler fix. You would think they might actually call and ask me if my problem was resolved or to just let me know they had been out. Still praying that the new antenna works better than my current one so I can free myself of Charter forever.

Please post which antenna you bought and your results with it, when available. TIA.

I bought the Clearstream 1 Convertible. It definitely works better than my other antenna. I scanned the channels and it picked up about 20 additional OTA channels that I didn't realize we could even get. I'm still doing some testing but so far it looks pretty good. I just have to make sure in bad weather whether or not the signal remains strong. I also have to experiment a little more with the placement of the antenna. If all that goes to plan then I'll be marching into the Charter office next week to cancel.

I just have to make sure in bad weather whether or not the signal remains strong.

I'm too lazy to plug in your coordinates to see where you live. But you should definitely make sure your VHF stations (if you have any) will come in under marginal conditions. E.g. in the Amazon comments you link to, someone from my neck of the woods said: "One friend's house in northeast Portland, OR is only 5 miles from the towers but in a difficult spot and he also needed a ClearStream 5 for still-VHF channels 8, 10, and 12." My experience was similar. My Silver Sensor antenna worked great when all the locals were UHF, but now I have marginal reception on the channels that switched back to VHF-high in June of last year. Just like your Clearstream 1, my Silver Sensor is (nominally) a UHF-only antenna.

I was having a hard time finding the sweet spot inside so I decided to move my indoor/outdoor antenna outside to see if I could get a stronger signal. I disconnected where the outside cable enters my house and connected the antenna. Looking at antennaweb, I'm now getting all the OTA channels I'm suppose to get including UHF and VHF. I didn't get any pixelation last night at all across the board. Unfortunately there is not any bad weather in sight. But even if my signal drops a bit I think I'll be fine with my locals since right now they are all coming in at around 95% signal strength. I could have gotten them close to 100% but some minor OTA channels suffered. So I tried to find a balance to where I could get all the channels offered. If those minor ones go out during bad weather then that will be fine with me. I'm going to test it for another day or so but it's looking like I'll be able to cancel Charter by the end of the week.

I'm going to test it for another day or so but it's looking like I'll be able to cancel Charter by the end of the week.

Nice work! I may have missed it but did you happen to mention how far you are from the major antenna array? Most cities have one area, usually the highest nearby geographical location, where most if not all of the major networks affiliates install their broadcast antennas. TIA and congrats!

Nice work! I may have missed it but did you happen to mention how far you are from the major antenna array? Most cities have one area, usually the highest nearby geographical location, where most if not all of the major networks affiliates install their broadcast antennas. TIA and congrats!

Looking at antennaweb, that distance for me is around 12 miles. There are two others that stretch out to 23 miles and 31 miles as well. I guess I'm lucky that most are fairly close and that I must be in a good area. I took my other antenna to my brother's house (not even 2 miles from mine) a couple of months ago and he couldn't get anything with it. He does live in what I would consider a low lying area so I guess the signal is being obstructed.

Well, this is a new one to me. Seems that it was never anything to do with the cable at all. My pixelation problems are caused by my cell phone. I have a blackberry which I got recently for work. The frequency used for 3G is close and no matter how far in the apartment the phone is away from everything, it still causes the pixelation. So, for now when I wanna watch TV I will turn off the phone.

The cable guys did fix a leak that was happening, but it was the phone. That's why I was glad when actual charter techs knocked on the door and not the contractors. No chance they would have thought of that. I was like, right, it operate on about the same freq. Never heard of it causing problems, but it does...

Well, this is a new one to me. Seems that it was never anything to do with the cable at all. My pixelation problems are caused by my cell phone.

For the life of me I can't remember what it was about, but I remember reading about someone else's issues with their cell phone causing havoc. Guess you live an learn. Who needs a phone when you're watching TV right?

I've got a TiVo HD that I've been using for quite some time now without any trouble at all. I moved this past weekend and had to switch from Verizon FiOS to Comcast cable. I've just got their "limited" package which is pretty much broadcase channels and a few others like Discovery. It also includes HD channels. I haven't watched TV much lately because I've been busy unpacking, but SD and HD channels looked just fine when the cable was connected directly to my TV.

Since I'm in the midst of unpacking, I finally just got around to hooking up my TiVo and have noticed that most of the HD channels have pixelation (I think I found a couple that don't do it). If it matters, the TiVo is connected with an HDMI cable and the coax cable is connected directly to the TiVo from the wall.

While I haven't had a chance to read through this entire thread, I did read the last few pages and haven't really seen a situation like mine. Does anyone have any suggestions?

I moved my stalwart TiVo HD from TWC to Grande Comm (moved to temp apt while house hunting). I have pixelation now on Grande, where it used to be clean on TWC.
DVR Diags shows: Signal strength 50-56, SNR 30-31db, RS Uncorrected 10012 (climbs by apx 5 every 5 sec), RS Corrected 10856622 (climbs 5000-800 per second).
The two RS stats seem scary. I've had 3 techs out so far - they say the signal strength is fine according to their meter. We've replaced coax cables, barrel connectors, splitters to no avail. Suggestions? Thanks fellas.

I moved my stalwart TiVo HD from TWC to Grande Comm (moved to temp apt while house hunting). I have pixelation now on Grande, where it used to be clean on TWC.
DVR Diags shows: Signal strength 50-56, SNR 30-31db, RS Uncorrected 10012 (climbs by apx 5 every 5 sec), RS Corrected 10856622 (climbs 5000-800 per second).
The two RS stats seem scary. I've had 3 techs out so far - they say the signal strength is fine according to their meter. We've replaced coax cables, barrel connectors, splitters to no avail. Suggestions? Thanks fellas.

They need a new meter SNR and Signal strength is too low. You should be seeing SNR 34 or above.

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I have a S3 OLED with Fios and seem to be running into pixelation issues now. Everything was perfect for years until about a month ago.

Now I'm getting random pixelization. Sometimes it's so bad that it looks like the screen freezes and I'm forced to fast forward through it. Audio gets all messed up during this too. The problem is very intermittent which makes it hard to troubleshoot.

Kickstart 54 showed SMART failures on the main drive. So I got rid of the expander and swapped the main drive out for a new one. No more SMART errors, but the pixelization problem didn't go away.

Supposedly attenuation is no longer needed since 11h, but I decided to try that anyways. I tried attenuating at -3, -6, -10, -13, -16, -20 until I lost the signal. I saw pixelization occur at all of those attenuation levels - some were worse than others.

Usually RS Corrected and Uncorrected are going nuts during the pixelation, but I noticed that a couple of times the Corrected and Uncorrected numbers didn't change from the values before and after the pixelation - not always, but I did see this a couple of times.

This is very strange, does anyone have any ideas or know if there is a Fios issue that's been introduced in the last month or so?

This is very strange, does anyone have any ideas or know if there is a Fios issue that's been introduced in the last month or so?

Does this happen on just a few channels or on all channels? Most of my FiOS channels come in w/o any errors, correctable or uncorrectable. But a few channels experience a fairly large number of correctable errors and even a few uncorrectable ones. I see the video glitches on the screen, but I know what to look for. Thankfully my kids don't (one of the few problem channels is Disney 780).

But this isn't "new". I've had the problem since install, around April.

I don't think there's anything wrong with my FiOS fiber and ONT. It could be some design defect in the TiVo HD (I have multiple boxes with the problem). But I think it's something to do with how the shows are encoded and multiplexed together onto the fiber. However, I'm not very knowledgeable about this stuff. You might search around on dslreports to see what the "experts" say.

I have a S3 OLED with Fios and seem to be running into pixelation issues now. Everything was perfect for years until about a month ago.

Now I'm getting random pixelization. Sometimes it's so bad that it looks like the screen freezes and I'm forced to fast forward through it. Audio gets all messed up during this too. The problem is very intermittent which makes it hard to troubleshoot.

Kickstart 54 showed SMART failures on the main drive. So I got rid of the expander and swapped the main drive out for a new one. No more SMART errors, but the pixelization problem didn't go away.

Supposedly attenuation is no longer needed since 11h, but I decided to try that anyways. I tried attenuating at -3, -6, -10, -13, -16, -20 until I lost the signal. I saw pixelization occur at all of those attenuation levels - some were worse than others.

Usually RS Corrected and Uncorrected are going nuts during the pixelation, but I noticed that a couple of times the Corrected and Uncorrected numbers didn't change from the values before and after the pixelation - not always, but I did see this a couple of times.

This is very strange, does anyone have any ideas or know if there is a Fios issue that's been introduced in the last month or so?

I am having a ton of problems as well. They started about a month ago. I am getting pixelation on some channels and on recorded shows, some are only recording as a "partial" becuase the pixelation is so bad it drops the rest of the program. I don't know if it is my expander or my FIOS. I have had attenuation on it for the past two years just fine, and I have removed the attenuation, problem still exists. I put it back, still exists. Next thing I guess is the expander, but I am really not sure what the problem is. Its not on every channel, and its not at all times, mostly at times from 5pm - 1am or so, heavy peak usage. Also mostly on HD channels.

Really frustrating, not sure what i should do, but I am looking at going back to a plain old DVR again...

I am having a ton of problems as well. They started about a month ago. I am getting pixelation on some channels and on recorded shows, some are only recording as a "partial" becuase the pixelation is so bad it drops the rest of the program. <snip>

That sounds frustrating as well and that you've done your homework.

There's a very good chance the issues are being caused by the expansion drive. Have a look at this post for some suggestions and see if it helps...

It's (the expansion drive, 500G, My Tivo Expander by WD) is about two years old, I know I am facing the problem of losing my recordings if I try and test out the tivo without it right?

The fact that I am having mostly problems on the HD does that make sense for the Expander?

Unfortunately yes. All recordings are striped across both drives, so if the Expander is beginning to fail it will affect everything.

The lifespan for the WD 500GB My DVR Expanders has been about 12 to 18 months so there's a very good chance that's the key to the problems you're seeing.

Yes, if you divorce your Expander (be sure to follow the proper procedures as listed in the referenced post) you would lose all of the recordings made since it was connected.

If you can keep your TiVo running long enough you could try transferring any non-copy protected recordings to your computer via TiVo Desktop or one of the third-party programs like KMTTG and then back when you have things resolved.

Just thought I'd go through my steps to fix the problem: freezing on live and recorded programs and pixellation on HD channels.

After 3 phone calls with Tivo techs, and several with Comcast, I looked at many ideas in the forum and tried most all. Powered off and on, recorded short HD programs every day, got a new eSATA cable for the expander, checked signal strength and moved splitters etc. to get perfect numbers, replaced cable cards (have two HD boxes - one of first two new cable cards from Comcast worked, returned to Comcast and got another which didn't work, did that again with same result, then got 4 cable cards and first one worked, returned the others - Comcast standard technicians (4 over 4 days) have no knowledge of Tivo and didn't even ask about the data id/host id - asked for supervisor who knew how. Then started calling supervisor first thing with good results - just bad cards. My Comcast location only gets returned cards - no new ones!. Still freezing.

Bought Premiere (only had two days before the end of their upgrade sale (then they exptended it for another month!) and hooked up with expander. Stuttering second day and then system powered down/rebooted by itself 1/2 hour later. Next day powered down again. Seemed like it was worse than the HD it replaced. Also go on the phone with WD tech support - no help there since expander out of warranty. Finally gave up on all my saved programs which I had moved from HD with expander to other Tivos and PC, then back to Premiere with expander - only 2 days worth of moving - threw a lot away. Removed the expander and have not had a problem since on either the HD or the Premiere. Obviously I didn't need to buy the Premiere at all - trying to decide whether to keep it or return within the 30 day period. Right now I am getting a bigger internal drive for one HD and will move stuff back again.

Net result - the expander seems to be the cause of the problem on both the HD and the Premiere. Only got a life of 15 months out of it. May try to reuse on my PC as an extra drive.

Quite a waste of two weeks effort - but I got to know my Tivo cabling and transferring programs a lot better.

Many folks have gone before you with the exact same problem and resolution. The 500GB WD My DVR Expanders seem to have an average lifespan of 12 to 18 months. Once the go south a lot of issues can arise as you found out. Interestingly enough it appears that about half of the problems are with the enclosure or power supply and not the actual hard drive. It's quite possible that if you pull the hard drive you'll find that it still works fine. A number of folks have "repurposed" them as backup drives for their computers, etc.

In any case, it's probably good to know that everything else is working fine and life can be good again.

Thanks, Rich. Hopefully the frustration will be over soon - ordered a 1TB Hitachi Deskstar drive ($69.99), torx screwdriver set, and SATA to USB adapter from Amazon this morning. Total of $112.22 including shipping. Thought a lot about getting a 1TB My DVR expander - now only $109 from Amazon, but since my HD warranty is up anyway, decided to upgrade instead.

Have you heard anything on the life of the WD 1TB expanders? Any better than the 500GB?

FYI, I checked when I bought the WD 500GB expander from TIVO - it was May, 2008 - so I actually got 26 months out of it before it started causing problems. Guess I should feel lucky it went as long as it did.

I will be following the upgrade instructions on the forum - if it goes as well as others reported, will probably do the same to my other HD.

Thanks, Rich. Hopefully the frustration will be over soon - ordered a 1TB Hitachi Deskstar drive ($69.99), torx screwdriver set, and SATA to USB adapter from Amazon this morning. Total of $112.22 including shipping. Thought a lot about getting a 1TB My DVR expander - now only $109 from Amazon, but since my HD warranty is up anyway, decided to upgrade instead.

Have you heard anything on the life of the WD 1TB expanders? Any better than the 500GB?

FYI, I checked when I bought the WD 500GB expander from TIVO - it was May, 2008 - so I actually got 26 months out of it before it started causing problems. Guess I should feel lucky it went as long as it did.

I will be following the upgrade instructions on the forum - if it goes as well as others reported, will probably do the same to my other HD.

Thanks to all the people who have put such good info on this site.

Good plan. Although the WD 1TB My DVR Expanders haven't been around as long, there are far fewer reports of any issues with them as compared to the same time frame of the 500GB models so WD may have learned some lessons.

I have a Series 3 TivoHD with Comcast in the Pittsburgh market. My Tivo box is unmodified and I do not have an expansion drive on it. I bought this unit in January 2010 and I noticed pixelation about 2 weeks ago. The problem occurs 100% of the time on PBS Sprout channel (SD). It also happens quite a bit on HGTV (HD). As far as I know, the other channels are coming in fine, at least haven't noticed it on any other channels.

I've rebooted the box, I had Comcast come out, they checked the coax cable from the wall to the box and swapped out the CableCard. That made no difference. The technician did mention that we have a weak signal at that outlet. Which is surprising because the technician that came out during the install said we had a strong signal.

Any suggestions?

Thank you very much! My 19 month old and 4 yr old watch a lot of Sprout and my wife watches HGTV, so I am getting a lot of heat from them to get this fixed! LOL

I have a Series 3 TivoHD with Comcast in the Pittsburgh market. My Tivo box is unmodified and I do not have an expansion drive on it. I bought this unit in January 2010 and I noticed pixelation about 2 weeks ago. The problem occurs 100% of the time on PBS Sprout channel (SD). It also happens quite a bit on HGTV (HD). As far as I know, the other channels are coming in fine, at least haven't noticed it on any other channels.

I've rebooted the box, I had Comcast come out, they checked the coax cable from the wall to the box and swapped out the CableCard. That made no difference. The technician did mention that we have a weak signal at that outlet. Which is surprising because the technician that came out during the install said we had a strong signal.

Any suggestions?

Thank you very much! My 19 month old and 4 yr old watch a lot of Sprout and my wife watches HGTV, so I am getting a lot of heat from them to get this fixed! LOL

Sounds more like a local issue than TiVo if those are the only channels that are having problems. FWIW we've had both Comcast and Verizon FiOS and HGTV had/has macroblocking (pixelization) periodicallly from both carriers…although it was worse with Comcast (especially when an HGTV show would use split screens). I've read posts on other forums indicating the same experiences so I think there is something inherent in their delivered signal causing problems.

That said, the best thing to do now is to check all of your connections (sounds like you already have) like the coax, any splitters, etc. All coax cables s/b new with snug connections. Plug TiVo directly into a wall outlet…do not use a surge protector. (The best thing to use is a UPS). By all means do NOT run your coax through a surge protector either as it can have a severe impact on the cable signal. If all your connections are good the next step is to check several readings found on TiVo's diagnostic screens.

First go ahead and check your signal strength: TiVo Central > Messages and Settings > Settings > Channels > Signal Strength - Cable. Tune to the channels that are presenting problems and see what the meter shows. Note if it is any different for those channels Vs others (probably will be the same). Ideal SS s/b in the range of 70 to 95 (around 90 or so being best) with little fluctuation. If it's continually swinging higher and lower, if it's lower than 70 or if it's pegged at 100 there can be PQ problems.

Next check the Signal to Noise Ratio or SNR for the offending channels: TiVo Central > Messages and Settings > Account and System Information > DVR Diagnostics. Each tuner has its own set of stats with Tuner 0 showing up first…paging down through the screens (Ch up/down on the remote) will take you to Tuner 1. The SNR s/b between 31dB and 37dB and fairly steady. Anything outside of that could indicate signal trouble.

The next thing to check is RS Corrected and RS Uncorrected errors on the problematic channels, ideally when you see problems. These numbers can be found on the same diagnostic screen as those above. What you're looking for are the RS Corrected and RS Uncorrected lines. Ideally they should both be zero. When tuned to the problematic channels you could see hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands or even millions of RS Uncorrected errors. If so, then you have a signal issue, which could be caused by a defective splitter or cable. RS Uncorrected errors are how TiVo reports signal errors that cause macroblocking/pixelization and audio dropouts. If you see 0 RS Uncorrected errors on the channel, then you know you are seeing the channel just as it is delivered. A few dozen or even a few hundred RS Uncorrected errors generally won't be noticeable, but if you see thousands or millions of RS Uncorrected errors per minute, then you know that additional pixelization and/or AV degradation is introduced.

Again, if you're only seeing issues on two channels it doesn't sound like TiVo. If the issues start to propagate to other channels it could be an indication of a failing hard drive, but we won't go there until we get an idea of what you're seeing with respect to the above.

I moved my stalwart TiVo HD from TWC to Grande Comm (moved to temp apt while house hunting). I have pixelation now on Grande, where it used to be clean on TWC.
DVR Diags shows: Signal strength 50-56, SNR 30-31db, RS Uncorrected 10012 (climbs by apx 5 every 5 sec), RS Corrected 10856622 (climbs 5000-800 per second).
The two RS stats seem scary. I've had 3 techs out so far - they say the signal strength is fine according to their meter. We've replaced coax cables, barrel connectors, splitters to no avail. Suggestions? Thanks fellas.

Did you ever get a resolution to this? I'm in a similar situation, I've had 2 techs out, the third is on Sunday and the Tivo says signal is around 50-60 and I have bad pixelation, but the guys say my signal is right where it should be. RS corrected is a constantly growing number, so I do feel that it is a low signal but thier meters saying that everything is find is very frustrating.

Did you ever get a resolution to this? I'm in a similar situation, I've had 2 techs out, the third is on Sunday and the Tivo says signal is around 50-60 and I have bad pixelation, but the guys say my signal is right where it should be. RS corrected is a constantly growing number, so I do feel that it is a low signal but thier meters saying that everything is find is very frustrating.

Can you clarify a couple of things? First is this new…something that just started happening or has it gotten worse over time? Do things get worse or better depending on the weather…particularly when it rains? Also, is it your RS Corrected or RS Uncorrected errors that are rising? It's an important distinction. RS Corrected numbers indicate how many times the forward error correction (FEC) had to be invoked to fix errors since the channel was tuned. The RS Uncorrected number indicates how may times the error exceeded the ability of the FEC to correct it. Final question, do you see the same thing on both tuners or is it just one and is it with the same channels, some of the same channels or all of them?

If your RS Uncorrected is 0 or low teens to hundreds and you're experiencing PQ problems like macroblocking/pixelization then the issue could be poor data in the stream coming from the original provider (HGTV, CNN, etc.) or it's possible that the Tivo is corrupting the data in some fashion. If the RS Uncorrected value is climbing then you most likely have a signal issue as mentioned above.

Bottom line, if your signal strength is 50 to 60 there is absolutely something wrong. Are the cableco techs testing the strength at the coax connection at your TiVo or elsewhere…such as outside or at the headend? Whatever the case, you're never going to have a decent experience with that signal strength.

FWIW things had been going along fine for us when we had Comcast for about a year. All of a sudden all sorts of issues popped up…dropouts macroblocking, etc. Comcast came out and swore everything was "fine". It was not. After three truck rolls a supervisor came out…checked a few things on the street, said he'd be back in a little while. When he returned he said that there was a wiring problem at one of the terminals a few blocks away. Seems a new installation had caused one of their folks to mess up our connection. After that everything was perfect.

Cableco techs often like to blame TiVo for whatever problems arise for all the reasons you can imagine. Don't take "It's fine" for an answer. Get specific readings and post them here. Make sure they understand that until your signal strength is acceptable that you're not going to let things go.

That said, it's quite possible that it's something to do with your inside wiring…old coax, splitters, connectors, etc. The difference in our own house is measurable. The coax that runs into our downstairs family room is brand new. SS is around 95 to 100 across the board. The coax feed that goes upstairs is about 15 years old (original to the house). The SS for the upstairs TiVo is about 70 to 75…not nearly as strong. However both TiVo's work perfectly.

They may want to put a signal amplifier in. That may or may not resolve your issue. If the SS is weak coming in, it's garbage in, garbage out. The SS from the street all the way to your first connection in the house s/b as strong as they can deliver. Some signal degradation after that can be acceptable, but it shouldn't start until after their connection to your house and it cannot be below 70 or so on your TiVo. So don't give up and don't let anyone else give up either.